Straight pull towel dispensing mechanisms have been utilized to allow dispensing of rolled paper towels which have perforations at prescribed lateral locations. Oftentimes a straight pull apparatus extracts the towel members from an inner open cylindrical area of the towel where the paper towel folds to a lower opening passing therethrough. A certain amount of friction acting upon the paper towel will break the perforation and one of the towel members will disengage from the roll of towels and a portion of the adjacent upper towel member will protrude through the opening of the towel dispensing apparatus.
Oftentimes paper quality and the general qualities of the paper have a tendency to provide different dynamics of the tearing action. For example, in some cases the paper may be thicker or the fiber matrix itself may be stronger. Further, the type of perforations can differ in cut length and attachment length in the lateral direction. In particular, the thickness of the paper towel will create a different cross-sectional area where the towel member is folded up and passing through the lower opening of a towel dispensing apparatus.
In the original center pull designs, a dispenser used in hard roll of towels and pulled the paper up through the center through an eye of a hole, and it was difficult to load because the user needed two hands to load the item by threading the paper from the top and pulling it out through the lower hole in the bottom. Oftentimes, a janitor will hold the item between his shoulder and cheek so he can use both hands to push the lower hole into the casing and have one hand free to feed the hole and pull the paper out of the bottom portion while simultaneously trying to finesse the entire roll into a holding place within the casing. Oftentimes the orifice was a fixed size, so if there was any issue with the quality or thickness of the paper or the change in the idiosyncrasies, there were problems related to tearing at a proper length to have a rather short extended tail or one which is too long.
A second generation of center pull towels included two improvements. One was a split funnel that rotated such that instead of placing in the material in a hole, there was a split and the janitor could place the material in the split. Thereafter, in the back portion of the unit, the unit can be adjusted. Because the adjustment member was in the rearward portion, this made the process very inconvenient and increased difficulty in determining which direction of rotation would tighten the orifice.
Further, paper is very abrasive and orifices tend to wear, such that an adjustment of an orifice may need to be performed in some forms during the use of a paper towel roll.
As disclosed herein, there is an embodiment involving fine-tuning the orifice setting in the front portion of the unit when the unit is open. Further disclosed is an automatic tension setting.
Therefore, there is a need for an improved adjustment of the opening where an iris adjustment system can provide a system for a closing the iris after a person maintaining the paper towel dispensing unit has placed a roll of paper towels therein. Disclosed herein is a method and apparatus for enclosing an adjustable iris to provide a more consistent towel breaking so a sufficient amount of towel extends out of the apparatus for a second withdrawal of a perforated towel section.